Monday, June 09, 2008

Time to catch up...

I made some journal covers... the first one was a bit small, so I gave it to Reuben, the third one was just right. It's for our business coach, John O'Connell..... We had a big snow dump on the weekend so we went out to Coalgate to enjoy the snow. Here is our cottage looking beautiful..... And here (drum roll please) is my Orange Crush quilt, which I call Chatharsis....I got up at 5.30 to finish this quilt top. I've been working on it for a while, and I wanted to steal some time for me to finish it. I'm calling my quilt "Catharsis" because I used all the scraps from the various bits of my journey over the last few months. I had the pink from the "It's ok to be feminine" quilt, and the orange and grey from the "Keep with the process bag" and some other stuff too. I ended up using all the greys from the "Grey day" quilt too. I resisted using them at first, but then I found that as I did, the colours blended together, and I made peace with myself over that part of the journey. It's kind of hard to explain, but Catharsis is a process of finding healing by making things, and it certainly works for me! The result is a very striking quilt, full of precious pieces. I'm absolutely thrilled with it. Here are the lessons I learnt as I worked...

You have to look again at the hard places and see how they fit in the big picture.

You need to develop new skills to make progress.

You have to make peace with your fears.

You have to make peace with your past.

Nothing is wasted, even the ugly bits.

You need to use all the pieces you have to make a whole picture.

No point hanging on to old stuff, it can suit a whole different purpose in its new role.

You have to have faith in the designer.

It doesn't matter if others are future on that you, as long as you keep on with the process.

You can cheer the others on, but nothing beats doing it yourself.

One day all the lessons you've learnt will come together and make sense.

Not till the end will you see the whole picture.

Others can have exactly the same instructions and end up with a completely different result. That's ok.